Taiwan's economic woes did not seem to have any effect on the annual Valentine's Day business this year, as evidenced by the soaring sales of flowers, cakes, chocolates and condoms as well as large numbers of dinner and hotel room reservations yesterday.
According to hotel sources, restaurants in some upmarket hotels were fully booked for Valentine's Day dinners.
PHOTO: CHU YU-PING, TAIPEI TIMES
Hotel room reservations, however, were not as profitable as candlelight dinners this year, according to the sources, because Valentine's Day fell on a Wednesday.
Roses were the most popular Valentine's Day gift, with bouquets of 99 roses selling like hot cakes despite the exorbitant price of NT$15,000 per bundle. The Chinese for "nine" (chiu,
7-Eleven in high gear
Over the past two days, the convenience store chain 7-Eleven sold 50,000 tulips shipped by air from Holland. Another 70,000 tulips shipped from France hit the stands yesterday at NT$160 apiece.
Those too busy to remember the "Western" Valentine's Day yesterday can have another shot at it on August 25, which is "Chinese" Valentine's Day. It celebrates a story of love and reconciliation between a cowherd and a weaver-girl.
To celebrate yesterday's special occasion, the Presidential Office posted a poem via an animated page on its Web site (http://www.oop.gov.tw). The poem played on President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) name, which literally means "flat water."
The poem from Chen and first lady Wu Shu-chen (
"Love is like water; it is clear and without impurities. Love is like water; a stream that runs without pause. Love is like water; it sacrifices itself to nourish all things."
At Taipei's main post office on Chunghsiao West Road, more than 100 stamp collectors lined up early yesterday morning to buy Taiwan's first-ever stamps featuring Western zodiac signs. Yesterday's issue, which was timed to coincide with Valentine's Day, consists of three stamps featuring the "Air" signs -- Aquarius, Gemini, and Libra. The other three sets of stamps -- "Earth," "Fire" and "Water" -- are scheduled to be issued on April 20, July 25, and Nov. 8 respectively.
Yesterday's stamps were also Taiwan's first oval-shaped stamps.
The post office also staged a special stamp exhibition featuring Valentine's Day stamps. Post officials said they have not ruled out issuing stamps commemorating both Chinese and Western Valentine's Days in the future.
On the darker side of the romantic occasion, doctors at Taipei Medical University Hospital removed a mobile phone from the rear end of a woman rushed to hospital with severe abdominal pains after a sex game went awry on Tuesday.
X-rays revealed a Nokia 8850 inside the rectum of the 20-year old woman, who later explained to doctors that she had been playing around with her boyfriend and that he had inserted the phone inside her.
It's not the first time the hospital has had to deal with such a case. A week earlier, another woman, aged 19, had asked the hospital to remove a mobile phone from her behind.
"We were all wondering why," said Elaine Weng of the hospital's PR department. "Well, we guessed it's because some mobile phones have this vibrating function."
Falling in love
In a separate story, a couple drinking and romping in celebration of Valentine's tumbled from their 7th-storey balcony in Kaohsiung.
The 33-year-old man and his 31-year-old girlfriend survived the fall but suffered fractures to the arms and legs after they landed on the roof of a neighboring three-storey building.
The woman, identified only by her surname Lin (林), grabbed an iron bar after she unexpectedly slipped on the balcony.
Her boyfriend, surnamed Chen (陳), went to grab her, but was unable to hold on and the pair fell four floors to the roof below.
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